


Where The Sun Don't Ever Shine

by Meduseld



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dark Past, First Time, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Teenagers, Which is a warning in an of itself, Witcher Child-Rearing, tread lightly, which is - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: It might be their only chance.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 15
Kudos: 102
Collections: Witcher Kink Meme (Dreamwidth)





	Where The Sun Don't Ever Shine

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](https://witcherkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/429.html?thread=169901#cmt169901) on the Witcher Kink Meme. Before we get started, I want to say that if Game of Thrones can age the characters up so the sex isn’t weird, so can I, which means they’re like 16+ here. I’m also TV only so I’m making up the backstory.

The instructors don't much care what they do the night before the Trial of the Grasses. It might well be their last night on this side of the dirt, after all. They won’t begrudge them what they do with it.

And anyway there’s hardly much trouble they can get into in Kaer Morhen, even if no one will try to keep them in check, or herd them into the dormitory, or shush them, tonight.

Mostly, it serves to leave them at loose ends.

Some of the other boys, those that hadn’t shut themselves up to weep alone, had passed around a mostly empty bottle of bad spirits, or maybe just rotted juice, which makes Geralt wince. He wants to _live_ , and that doesn’t seem like it’s very helpful to that end. 

That would be the only real rebellion, to take any one of the thousand weapons in the keep and use it on yourself. Or the others. 

Though the instructors would definitely step in to stop that, and they’d already survived their own trials. What chance would any of them have? 

The only other path would be to run, but it’s just as laughable. Where would they even go?

It’s been years since Geralt, or any of the others, have left Kaer Morhen and its lands. Even if they managed to escape the natural fortress of the Blue Mountains around it, they can hardly cover their traces from the witchers that taught them to track in the first place. Only the Gods knew what would happen if they had to drag you back. Nothing good, certainly.

He doesn’t want to be here, and he doesn’t know anywhere else he would want to be.

All Geralt can do is follow Eskel after he leaves the keep, his lip curling up at the other boys laughing around a fire, pretending to be drunker than they are. 

Geralt doesn’t need any coaxing to go, either. It doesn’t feel like the harmless fun of the pranks they’ve played on each other over the years, the quick sips of liquor they’ve stolen, the times they’ve gone a bit too far in sparring sessions, happily comforted by the fact that Master Rodrik or any of the others would stop anything really dangerous. 

It feels desperate, dark. Especially when they started speaking about girls, women, free or bought, even though none of them have seen any for years. 

Eskel’s mother was a whore. He knows that, the way everyone else does, the way is true for plenty of other boys too, though none that are with them now. Tonight that feels like perilous information, somehow. Not another way to tease. 

It’s honestly a relief when he realizes that Eskel’s heading off in a direction Geralt knows. It’s one they’ve been on so often before there’s no need for special eyes to find it in the dark.

The dirt path that leads to the lake. 

He doesn’t think anything of it at first. Eskel loves the water, took to the swimming lessons they all had, tossed into the water like rocks, better than most. 

He even joins Master Aeron for swims in the morning sometimes, even when it’s so cold Geralt has to bribe himself with the knowledge he’ll get to see Eskel bare-chested and dripping to manage to get out of bed and meet him at the shore before breakfast. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Eskel was a Skellige man too. 

It is only when they get there, the lake dark and flat like shining black glass, that Geralt is afraid. There are stories about this place too. About centuries worth of drowned boys that were almost witchers: some by accident, some on purpose, some trying to flee. The thought of Eskel being one of them is unbearable

Geralt brushes the back of his hand, desperate and suddenly shy. He hasn’t touched Eskel outside of training or roughhousing since they were small, somewhere between The Choice and getting better from it, strong enough to start on actual swords instead of wooden placeholders. 

“Just looking” Eskel says, without looking back but taking Geralt’s hand into his, watching the wind make patterns on the water. 

He’s more broadly framed than Geralt, shorter too, but stronger than he looks. When they’d slid down a ridge in training, Eskel had been the one to hold Geralt fast, keeping him from slipping further in the snow with the others they’d been roped to, even though Geralt weighed more than he did. He’d never felt safer. Not even drying off in the warm keep afterwards, Vesemir looking at them with something close to pride.

“C’mon” he says, tugging Eskel’s hand like he’s a child again, even though he stopped being one the day Vesemir picked him up off the side of the road like he weighed nothing.

After a moment, Eskel lets himself be lead, even though Geralt doesn’t actually know where he’s going. Going back to the dormitories feels like a defeat, joining the other boys feels unthinkable and the keep itself feels unbearable. There is only one place to go. 

He blushes when he hears Eskel snort, amused, behind him as he realizes where they’re headed, but neither of them slow. It’s not warm in the remains of the old granary, but it’s out of the wind and sheltered enough.

They’ve both been here a thousand times too, but always alone and furtive. It’s where everyone goes, away from the open ears of the dormitories and the keep, since they’ve been old enough to figure out the best way to put their hands between their legs.

Quick and quiet as a whisper, Eskel locks an arm around his throat to ruffle Geralt’s hair and dances away, laughing. Red-cheeked, Geralt spins and punches his arm.

It’s nice to play again, to feel like they really are wolf pups, safe in their den. It’s always Eskel that makes him feel safeguarded, like he belongs.

It had been Eskel to explain why none of the other boys in Vesemir’s cart was screaming to be let down, why the villagers they passed averted their eyes and pretended not to hear him.

Eskel was older. Still is, by a winter or so. He’d also been the one to tuck away the bread roll Geralt had thrown angrily, refusing to take anything from Vesemir.

The other boys, almost all gaunt and sunken eyed, had stared like he’d sprouted wings and Vesemir’s eyebrow had only lifted, waiting for hunger to teach the lesson for him. By the time it was dusk, as they rattled down the road, bones aching, his belly had growled as he shivered. The others were asleep in little piles.

Except Eskel, watching him carefully, until there was no one else to see him slip the roll into Geralt’s hand.

The next thing he remembered, after wolfing it down like the animal the school was named for, was blinking open gritty, swollen eyes, neck sore from where it had been resting on Eskel’s shoulder as they clattered into Kaer Morhen’s courtyard. They had been inseparable ever since.

The instructors joked that they must be brothers, both with dark hair and blue eyes, though Geralt’s curled and took on red and gold in the right light, while Eskel’s lay flat and straight and was as dark as a raven’s wing.

It was possible that he had had a brother there, a blood one, but no longer. The other two that came north from the brothel with Eskel are dead, one from The Choice, the other from a simple illness in the winter.

No one had mourned. A boy that weak wouldn’t have passed the trials, the instructors said. Over the years, they warned, more than half of the ones in their group would join the ones in the boneyard rather the ones on The Path.

“Enough, I yield” Eskel say laughing, for once, pulling Geralt down next to him in the dark of the aged bricks. They huddle against the wall, sheltering from the cold.

Eskel sighs, staring up like he wants to try and glimpse the stars between the broken spaces in the roof. They can all navigate using the heavens, by now.

To Geralt, he seems very far away, like he really is following the stars through the distant mountains. It makes him lonely.

Geralt wants to say something. Clever, or kind, but he’s never been one for words.

When he was small, he’d been a stutterer. The others had teased him at first, saying that years as a coddled Mama’s boy had left him stunted.

Even when he was with her, now fading fast from memory, he knew that his difficulty with simply _speaking_ had been disappointing. Sometimes he wondered if that was why she’d sold him.

And just like that he knows what he wants to say, to tell Eskel, to have him remember if he was the one to live. A secret thing, held closely to his heart.

“Iria” he says and blushes like an idiot again, realizing he hasn’t explained and can’t now.

There is only the briefest flicker of doubt in Eskel’s eyes before he says “Your name” and at whatever he sees in Geralt’s face “I remember”.

Geralt nods, unsure of what else to say beyond, “someone should”.

“Hard to forget” Eskel laughs and after a moment, Geralt does too.

He had resisted The Naming, as a boy. It was one of the first things done at Kaer Morhen, after they’d been inspected and told the rules. They were given new names for new lives.

Most took it easily, happy to have a permanent roof over their head and steady meals, and didn’t need more than one or two slaps to the head to remember to forget the old one.

Geralt had fought it, every step of the way, screaming the name his mother gave him to the high heavens, taking every punishment for it. Sometimes he wonders if it was that stamina that first gave the instructors an inkling that he might be able to endure additional trials.

In the end, Vesemir had simply ordered no one speak to him unless he accepted he was now Geralt. And in the meantime, tutored him personally.

Geralt had never had a father before. He hadn’t realize that he’d gained one when his mother bargained him away. For what he didn’t know, because Vesemir had refused to disclose the payment given. But he’d worked with Geralt, endlessly patient, until the stutter went away. It was unbecoming of a witcher, after all.

Only Eskel had never laughed at him. And been sole person to dare whisper at him in the night, before he really was Geralt, even though the instructors were likely to hear him. Sometimes they both had to stand in the rain for hours.

Funny that they can laugh at it now. Until Eskel's face dims like a dying fire.

"I don't have anything to give you in kind" he says, looking at his feet now.

“It’s alright if you don’t remember” Geralt says, awkward again, realizing that likely plenty of boys couldn’t tell you either.

Eskel shakes his head, half smiling the way he always does when Geralt says something stupid.

“I never had one” he admits, like he’s expecting Geralt to react poorly. Which he does right away.

“What?” he says, feeling the familiar tickle of his stutter strongly enough to stop from saying anything else beyond “how can that even happen?”

“They never gave me one” Eskel says, sighing, like he does and doesn’t want to tell this story. “There wasn’t a point. They only kept the girls. Or well. Sometimes the boys, if they were very pretty or very useful. Not if they were very clever. But I was just ‘boy’ or ‘you there’ or ‘that one’ or…” there was a rictus grin, just for a moment, on his face.

“Or?” Geralt prompts, horribly fascinated, like the first time he’d seen a corpse, as the instructor cut into it to show them what was inside. “Or Gull” he says, sad and pleased all in one.

“It’s just like sweet or dear, where I’m from” he adds quickly, and yes, Geralt had known Eskel was from a town with a port bustling with sailors. Everyone knew that much. But this felt special.

“The girls called us that, sometimes...Marya. My favorite was called Marya. She could sing. A lord bought her contract special, a winter before I came to Kaer Morhen”. For a moment, Eskel’s eyes shine, like he’s looking into a hearth.

Then he shakes his head, just like he does to rid himself of the water after a swim and sinks into a bruised silence Geralt recognizes from training sessions that went badly.

Geralt waits another moment and then lays his head on Eskel’s shoulder. It’s uncomfortable, Eskel is shorter, especially in the legs, but after a moment he tangles his hand in Geralt’s hair and he doesn’t want to move.

His eyes start to slip shut and he bites his lip, trying to stay awake. Falling asleep tonight just feels like a waste of time. Not that there is anything else he can do.

Eskel laughs, genuine this time. “Sleepy, then, pup? Alright, I’ll carry you to bed” he says and picks Geralt up and starts a new round of rowdiness

But they are gentler with each other this time.

When Eskel backs him into a wall, Geralt finds himself folding, soft, wishing Eskel was big enough to cover him up.

Geralt tells himself it’s just that he’s cold, lonely at the prospect of a trial he must face alone. And lifetime on his own after that.

Eskel’s eyes narrow in concern and he steps closer and Geralt finishes wilting. Eskel takes a step back, surprised, not yet horrified.

Then he takes a half step forward again. His head tilts, looks considering.

“Geralt-” “Yes” “I haven’t even-” “Yes, to whatever you say” Geralt says again because he’s sure. He trusts Eskel, totally

“Are you sure about this?” Eskel says after a moment, eyes studious the way they are when the instructors set them a new challenge with a trap hidden in it. Geralt nods.

They’ve never needed too many words, but he can make the effort for this. “It’s what everyone talks about, isn’t it? Some release?” And _just that_ he tries to add with his eyes. _You can trust me_ and he hopes that’s true.

But of course there’s more to it than that. Eskel is the only one he cares for, the one in all of Kaer Morhen he might say he loves.

Not to mention one of the most constant presences in his mind when he avails himself of this very granary, ever since he understood what his right hand might also be good for.

Eskel moves closer, eyes still open, taking in all of Geralt’s face. It’s so familiar it aches, and it’s so sudden to be the object of his focus that it takes his breath away.

His heart leaps in his throat and for one wild moment he wants to shove Eskel away and forget this ever happened. They’ll both be sent away on the Path eventually, if they even survive that long, and this will only serve make that parting blow, whichever it is, all the more difficult.

Then Eskel tilts his head, his truest habit, and presses a single dry and tender kiss on the hinge of Geralt’s jaw, the final _are you sure?_ and Geralt is lost.

He feels clumsy and stupid, aiming his face wildly at Eskel, who grabs it easily and presses their mouths together firmly.

Eskel’s lips are surprisingly soft, intoxicatingly thick, the skin on his face fascinatingly smooth. Whoever his father was, he must not have been able to grow a beard either.

Apparently the fixation is the same in reverse, Eskel’s fingertips stroke across Geralt’s stubble, like he’d been longing for a chance to touch.

By now it was clear that Eskel didn’t know what he was doing either, which made it easier to keep going. It wasn’t the first time they’d been in over their heads together, in training or with the world another them.

Though never quite like this, panting into each other's mouths, nipping at each other's lips, tracing each other with their tongues. But definitely not touching anywhere else, hands hovering awkwardly at each other’s cloak collars, fingers grasping along their jawlines.

Until Eskel surges forward with a sudden groan, slotting them together. He isn’t yielding, too muscled from training for that, but he is warm, and his solid thigh sliding and flexing between Geralt’s makes the sky spin.

That solid strength, suddenly turned _at_ him but not against him, makes Geralt feel like he’s soaring, even though it feels like his mind is draining, completely, between his legs, where he is achingly hard like he’s never been before.

For a second they freeze, when the enormity of it crashes down around them, the breathtaking fact that this is actually _happening_ , that they are both stiff as rock and pressed together where they are hardest.

And then Eskel starts to slowly rock his hips and Geralt feels his eyes roll back into his skull, realizing that is the first time in years of training that he isn’t in total control of the reactions of his body. He never thought it would feel this _good_.

They start rocking against each other and every tiny movement feels impossibly strange and perfect, giving him exactly what he didn’t know he was starving for.

Until it’s not enough, suddenly, and he’s keening against Eskel’s lips, hoping he can take the lead.

He does, sliding a cautious hand around Geralt’s right hip, then along his belly, the flat of his hand resting there for a moment before moving down and making Geralt suck his own tongue in so deep it feels it hits the hollow of his throat.

The night air feels like ice ghosting along his skin when Eskel opens his breeches, his face resting hot as a bonfire on the sliver of skin that bridges Geralt’s neck to his shoulder.

It’s too much, the way Eskel’s mouth breaths hot and wet as his fingers close on Geralt’s cock, which feels painfully hot, jumping in Eskel’s cool hand.

 _It’s just a hand,_ he tells himself, _I’ve had my hand on my cock before_. Which is true and the stupidest thing he could think because it’s different, it’s so different and it’s _Eskel_.

Geralt’s hand fumbles clumsy in the dark and Eskel almost laughs at the way he keens when Eskel moves his hand away and grabs Geralt’s, leads it to where it should be.

Eskel feels good under his touch. Almost too good. Smooth and silky and red hot.

It’s enough to get him to jerk up helplessly, fucking Eskel’s fist where it’s back where he wants it, pressing impossibly closer still.

Dimly, he thinks he should do something more, that Eskel deserves better. It’s his last night too. Geralt licks over his palm, surprised that he can taste Eskel on the skin, getting it wet in the way he likes when he does this for himself, and reaches down to grasp Eskel's cock fully, adding a little twist when he pulls.

The way Eskel moans into his neck is its own reward.

It’s good, really good, but he’s still clumsy, too distracted by the feeling to keep up any sort of rhythm.

Their knuckles keep knocking together until Eskel gets annoyed and yanks both their hands out of the way and grabs Geralt’s hips, moving them both fast and hard so they see stars.

Geralt flings his arms over Eskel’s shoulders, hides his face against Eskel’s broad, solid shoulder, and holds on for dear life.

Something shifts, some placement in their legs like a stuttered dance, and then Eskel’s' cock slips between Geralt's thighs.

He almost screams at the feel of it, awed and terrified and gone on lust. Eskel takes it as encouragement, or maybe he’s also too far gone to stop, and he snaps his hips up again and again, confident that Geralt is strong enough to take it.

He’s decided that the thing he loves most in the world is this: Eskel’s cock sliding up and down against him, thrusting far back enough sometimes to it brush along the root of Geralt’s cock and the thin skin that leads to his balls.

He might have done something stupid if Eskel didn’t have an iron hold on Geralt’s hips, keeping him steady as he rocks, helpless, his hips making tiny circles.

It suddenly feels the height of injustice that he hasn’t actually seen any of Eskel, not really, they’re not even naked and he’s so undone, so slick between the thighs and cracked open that all he can do about it is aim his face at Eskel like a it's blow and, as soon as his lips hit flesh, _bite_.

It shocks a happy gasp out of him, and a rougher, more erratic thrust. That extra pressure, extra friction has him screaming, his thighs straining as he braces for that one last thrust, for that last little push.

It comes when Eskel does, the sudden hot _wet_ shock of the feeling of his release coating Geralt’s cock and thighs.

Geralt himself comes with his teeth sunk deep into Eskel's collarbone, shuddering helplessly as Eskel strokes him through it, one broad hand between Geralt’s legs and the other spanning the back of Geralt’s neck, tangled in his hair.

They stay there for a long time, even though they’ve gone sticky and cold, until the wind is too much to bear, even in the little lee of the old granary.

No one cares that they slink in late, like night dark cats, to roll around again on Eskel’s thin pallet. Geralt tries to look his fill but the little light is dim and his eyes are still ordinary. Eskel kisses him to sleep to make up for it.

There isn’t even surprise on Vesemir’s face when he wakes them the next morning, curled around each other.

Before he rises, Eskel squeezes Geralt’s hand. Then he doesn’t look back.

It’s still enough to give Geralt the strength to stand.

The Trial comes next.

At the end of it, both of them surprised to be alive, they don’t speak of it.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [_In The Pines_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Pines) (I like [this version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E1iZH04-Gs)) because it’s A) very this and B) it works as a companion piece to [_Shiver The Whole Night Through_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23109892). I’d also like to add that googling the names of instructors at Kaer Morhen, other than Vesemir, proved unfruitful so, yes, those are [Rodrik Cassel](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Rodrik_Cassel) and [Aeron Greyjoy](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Aeron_Greyjoy). And, judging from Google, Witcher training is truly horrific... [For V, que te quiero]


End file.
